What’s New in Thesis Theme 1.8?
by Ashwin on August 25, 2010
in Blog Business
It’s time to embrace another version of the Thesis Theme and things just get better with each one. Here’s a peek review on What’s New with the Thesis Theme 1.8.
Header Image Upload made just easier!
With the earlier versions of the Thesis Theme, you’ll have to play around with the custom.css file for setting up the Header Image. But with 1.8, Thesis Theme makes it much easier and you can upload a Header Image using the Thesis Administration Panel.
Navigate to Thesis => Header Image and you’ll be able to Browse for and upload an Image of your choice.
Header Image Upload made easy with Thesis 1.8
Even better, Thesis can suggest you an optimum width of the Header Image that can be used, based on the existing layout settings. Much simple, eh!
You can upload Favicons too!
Like the Header Images, Thesis 1.8 makes it easy to setup the Favicons which were earlier done using the Additional Scripts option under Document Head.
All you have to do is prepare a Favicon (a 16 x 16 Image with an .ico extension) and upload it using the Thesis Admin Interface. If you aren’t using Thesis, here is another post to help you setup a Favicon for your WordPress Blog.
Yes, Thesis supports WordPress Custom Navigation Menus
WordPress Custom Nav menu
Do you want to go beyond configuring Pages and Categories in Navigation Menu with the Thesis Theme? You will just need WordPress 3.0 and Thesis Theme 1.8.
WordPress 3.0 helps you define Custom Navigation Menus which can include Pages, Categories or even External Links.
Here are the steps to use WordPress Navigation Menus with Thesis 1.8…
- After installation of Thesis 1.8, go to WP Admin => Appearance => Menus
- Create a new Custom Menu by giving it a Name
- Add the required Pages, Categories and External Links to the Custom Menu and Save Changes
- If you have more than one Custom Menu, choose the Menu to use by selecting the Primary Menu
- Go to WP Admin => Thesis => Site Options and choose WordPress Nav Menu as Menu type under Navigation Menu
Improved and much Easier SEO Setup for Categories & Tags
Page Options, which was introduced in Thesis 1.7 is now gone with Thesis 1.8. The primary use of the Page Options was to provide the SEO Details for individual Pages, Categories and Post Tags. Now they’ve been moved into more appropriate locations, to make their management easier.
- Page SEO Details can be provided in the Page Edit view
- Category and Tag SEO Details have been moved into WordPress’ Category and Tag Edit Pages
In addition to the regular SEO Details like
and <meta> description tags, you can now provide an Introductory Headline and Introductory Content to each Category and Tag. This definitely has a greater implication for the SEO of your Blog.
<div id="attachment_1940" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 300px">
<a href="/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/thesis18review_3.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1940" title="thesis18review_3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/thesis18review_3.jpg" alt="SEO Details for Categories and Tags" width="300" height="485"></a>
<p class="wp-caption-text">SEO Details for Categories and Tags</p>
</div>
<p>Thesis now offers full support for custom taxonomy pages in addition to category and tag pages.</p>
<h2>Other Changes from Thesis 1.7…</h2>
<ul>
<li>You can now enable support to use a Publishing tool like Windows Live Writer from within Thesis Theme</li>
<li>Thesis now offers support for the Google Fonts Directory. These are web-safe fonts and can be used to improve your Blog Design
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Some Gaps… Chris are you listening?</h2>
<p>Search Engines show only a certain number of characters in the </p>
<title> and the <meta> description tags. Thesis 1.8 tries to show you the number of characters as you type the <title> and the <meta> description, so that you know if to make them short. I see 2 gaps here – <em>Thesis doesn’t suggest what is the right number (may be an alert when the number is exceeded?) and on saving the text the count reverts back to ’0′.</em>
<p>If you already using Thesis Theme, 1.8 gives you another leap towards excellence If you are considering on a Premium WordPress Theme, grab Thesis and find out what wonders it can do.</p>
<p class="related_posts">Related posts:</p>
<ul class="related_posts">
<li>
<a href="/use-thesis-seo-controls/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: How to Use Thesis 1.7 SEO Controls like a Pro?">How to Use Thesis 1.7 SEO Controls like a Pro?</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/full-height-sidebar-thesis-theme/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Create a Full-Height Sidebar and Full-Width Navigation Menu in Thesis Theme">Create a Full-Height Sidebar and Full-Width Navigation Menu in Thesis Theme</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/setup-header-banner-image-thesis-theme/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Setup a Header Banner Image for your blog using Thesis Theme">Setup a Header Banner Image for your blog using Thesis Theme</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/thesis-theme-pagination/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Thesis Theme : Setup Pagination on Home Page">Thesis Theme : Setup Pagination on Home Page</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/search-box-in-navigation-bar-of-the-thesis-theme/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Search Box in Navigation Bar of the Thesis Theme">Search Box in Navigation Bar of the Thesis Theme</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="post_tags">Tagged as: <a href="/tag/thesis-1-8/" rel="tag nofollow">thesis 1.8</a>, <a href="/tag/thesis-theme/" rel="tag nofollow">thesis theme</a>, <a href="/tag/wordpress/" rel="tag nofollow">Wordpress</a></p>
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Wordpress keeps getting better and better. But I wish they would slow down. I’m tired of constantly updating.
The newsworthy aspect of the release is the merger of WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user), a fork of WordPress that allows multiple blogs to operate from a single installation. These two features are fully merged in Wordpress 3.0, as well as with SEO wordpress become more better.Thanks for post..
I have purchase Thesis 1.8 develop version. Am still in doubt about the use of “Robots Meta Tags” ( noindex, nofollow)
I read about some hardcode “nofollow” issue in Thesis 1.7. So what is the properly set up of the Robots Meta Tags)
Hope you can make it clear.
Thanks
Sure no problems… Let me write a Blog post on it, in the next few days…
Hi,
Does anyone know how to move the Navigation Menu below the Header image in Thesis 1.8?
Without hardcoding the theme, that is
It used to be pretty easy in 1.7, just pasting the following in custom_functions.php:
remove_action(‘thesis_hook_before_header’, ‘thesis_nav_menu’);
add_action(‘thesis_hook_after_header’, ‘thesis_nav_menu’);
but it doesn’t seem to work in 1.8 any longer.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you
Hi.. very nice reviews.. But my suggestion, thesis must add robots like index and follow.
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